Live Free or Die Hard

I went with Ye Old Matey to see Live Free or Die Hard last night.

The action movie girl in me thinks it was a kick ass movie. Each action sequence ratchets up the tension and violence just to see how much you can take it. These people know how to do action.

But since the movie was so heavily based around tech and hackers, I felt they could have done a much better job on the parts regarding getting into the computer systems. I mean, with a roll out keyboard, a usb port and a little bit of typing, these folks were doing incredible things only to have something flash up the old cliche, "access granted". I found the computer and tech parts so badly done it nearly wrecked my suspension of disbelief in the whole thing.

Nearly, but not entirely. Whoever decided to put Kevin Smith in this film made a wise decision. He adds much needed levity and a bizarre sort of realism to this film. He's as good an actor as he is a writer that's the highest compliment I can give him. He is so comfortable in front of the camera it's almost as if the two co-stars dropped into Smith's Askewniverse world for a moment not the other way around.

But, as I said earlier, these folks know how to do action and that really saves this film. By the end I felt that the only reason John McClane survived this episode was because he'd already been through hell like this three times before. It's like all the other movies were his training ground for this last, grand smashup.

Only one note, really rang sour for me. Just like Spidey having his moment of propaganda with the American Flag in Spidey3, this movie falls just short of spouting it's own jingoistic jibberish before it gets into the revolutionary spirit of things and blames the government for nearly everything: incompetence, negligence, lack of security at places that are so easily accessed it's laughable - heck even the Hurricane Katrina failure gets a shoutout.

Still, you don't have to worry about too much propaganda dialog in this film. It's short on talk and long on action and doubly long on cliches. The black guy dies first (well fourth or fifth), McClane is reduced to smart aleck one liners and the hero....well, it's John McClane.

Great date movie or group movie, but I think it's too violent for kids under 11 or 12.